Work Text:
July 2001
The late morning sun was high in the sky, its golden light illuminating the rolling fields that surrounded the Burrow. The clouds were sparse, and the few that were present were white and fluffy, moving slowly in the gentle breeze that stirred the leaves of the trees in the orchard.
Looking at this perfect pastoral landscape, one would never have thought that only three years earlier, this place had been ravaged by war. Charlie took a moment to breathe the clean air, savouring the smell of grass and honeysuckle that always reminded him of this place, of home, enjoying this moment of the peace he now knew to be precious.
That peace did not last long. The moment Charlie opened the back door of the house and stepped into his parents’ kitchen, he was greeted by a sight of pure chaos. Several mixing bowls of various sizes covered the counters, wooden spoons stirring their contents without the aid of a human hand, while in the sink a mountain of dishes were washing themselves. In the centre of it all was his mother Molly, who was directing the various utensils with her wand and humming along to the Celestina Warbeck track that was playing on the wireless.
“Blimey, mum. How many people are you expecting this evening?” asked Charlie, ducking underneath a plate as it soared across the room towards an open cupboard. At the sound of his voice, his mother smiled at him, but did not stop her work.
“At least twenty. All the family, plus a few extras,” she said. “Some of Ron and Harry’s schoolfriends, Kingsley, Andromeda and Teddy, Percy’s new girlfriend…”
“He’s got a girlfriend?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.” Molly sounded almost as if she were chiding Charlie. “Your brother is a lovely looking boy, he has a good job, he’s very intelligent. He’s a catch.”
“I’m sure he is. I just didn’t think he’d have the time for a girlfriend, what with all the Floo Network reforms he’s been working on.”
“Yes, he’s been working very hard. Everyone has been. George has all sorts of ideas for the shop, Ginny’s been training all hours of the day, and did Bill tell you about him and Fleur?”
Charlie nodded. “Yeah, they’re trying for another baby. Very exciting.” He added under his breath, “Though I’m not sure that Bill would count that as work…”
His mother either didn’t hear him, or had chosen to ignore him. She waved her wand, and conjured three cake tins out of thin air. A second wave, and the mixing bowls began to empty their contents into each of them.
“And I’m making the food for Harry’s birthday party later,” she said, with both a smile and a sigh. Charlie frowned.
“Did you want any help, or…”
“No, dear. Why don’t you go and find your father? I asked him to de-gnome the garden three hours ago and I haven’t seen him since, he should be done by now.”
Charlie may not have been a Legilimens, but he was good enough at reading people to know when he was getting in their way. He shrugged and went back out into the garden, which was empty other than for a few gnomes trying and failing to camouflage themselves in the grass. His father, whose task it had been to get rid of them, was nowhere to be seen.
Frowning, Charlie walked around the edge of the house in an attempt to find him. As he reached the old shed where he and his brothers had kept their broomsticks when they were young, he discovered that the door was unlocked and slightly ajar. As he went to open the door and look inside, he heard footsteps rush towards him and his father’s voice called out almost breathlessly.
“I just came in here looking for something, Molly.” Arthur Weasley’s face appeared in the gap in the partly opened shed door. His cheeks were slightly flushed, but he seemed to relax at the sight of his second-oldest son. “Oh, Charlie. It’s you.”
“Yeah, it’s me. What are you up to, Dad?”
“Like I said, I’m looking for a thing.”
Charlie’s father had never been a good liar. Charlie raised his eyebrows at him.
“Alright,” he said, trying not to laugh. “What are you really doing?”
The colour rose once more in Arthur’s cheeks, and Charlie found himself wondering if he really wanted to know. His father looked back into the shed, before opening the door and furtively beckoning Charlie inside and quickly shutting the door behind the pair of them.
Once Charlie was inside the shed, the reason for Arthur’s strange behaviour became obvious. Charlie shook his head in baffled amusement.
“Why is there a Muggle motorbike in here?” he asked. A part of him already knew the answer to that question. Either Arthur was taking it apart in order to figure out how it worked, or…
“I’m fixing it up,” said his father.
That meant that he was trying to get it to fly. Charlie exhaled and ran one hand through his hair.
“You do realise that when she finds out, Mum is going to lose it, right? You know how she reacted the last time.”
“This is different.”
It did not look different. Charlie had been there when his father had first started tinkering with his beloved Ford Anglia. He had sat on the toolbox — the same one that was lying next to the motorbike now — and watched him at work. Merlin, he had even helped him with parts of it.
“This one already flies, it’s just broken,” Arthur explained. “And it’s not for me, it’s for Harry. It belonged to his godfather, and I thought he might appreciate having it back in one piece for his birthday. I know I would have loved one of these when I was twenty-one.”
Every word was spoken with love. Charlie shrugged and pushed his sleeves up his arms.
“Go on, then,” he said, holding one hand out to his father. “Pass me a screwdriver.”
Arthur smiled, and did as his son requested. Together, the two of them worked peacefully on the motorbike, occasionally breaking the companionable silence to exchange whispered musings and questions and jokes.
This was exactly how it had been when Charlie had helped his father with the car all those years ago, when Bill had left for Hogwarts. Charlie had always been a child who was happy in his own company, but until then he had always had his older brother around. Without Bill, he became the oldest. He had never felt so much pressure, nor so lonely. Somehow, working with Arthur and sharing his secret had helped alleviate those worries.
He had almost forgotten how it had felt to while away the hours tinkering in the shed with his dad, but now that they were here again, it felt like he was nine years old, as if nothing had changed since his childhood.
But of course, Charlie was no longer nine years old, and everything in his life had changed. He was no longer the one being left at home, he was the one who had left. He had grown taller and stronger, and had become a man with stubble and scars. His father had lost his hair and one of his sons, and had become a grandfather.
“Do you ever wish you could go back in time?” Charlie found himself asking. Arthur frowned at him over the top of the handlebars.
“Not really,” he replied. “I do miss the old days, but it seems pointless to linger on the past. A waste of what I have right now, if that makes sense. These days, I’m quite content to just enjoy the moment. That keeps me busy enough.”
It did make sense. Charlie nodded, focusing his attention on the wheel he was working on.
“It feels like everyone is busy these days,” he murmured. He chuckled quietly to himself. “So much for peace.”
“Peace is overrated.”
Charlie’s nose wrinkled, and he snapped his head back up. “I’m sorry, what ?”
His father laughed and shook his head, not even looking up from the motorbike.
“Peace is a strange name for the opposite of war,” he said thoughtfully. “I always feel like it should be called something else, because without war, people are free to live their lives to the fullest. In my experience, living — really living — is rarely peaceful. Please can I have that wrench?”
Arthur made an interesting point, one Charlie couldn’t really argue with. His father was right, life had never been peaceful, even before the war. Life wasn’t supposed to be peaceful, it was supposed to be messy and loud and chaotic. It was the hundred dirty cooking utensils left behind after making dinner for your family. It was hiding illicit automobiles from your wife in the shed. It was first dates and practical jokes, practising Quidditch manoeuvres until your hands blistered, and trying for a baby until sex started to become boring.
It was a boy who had once sat on his father’s toolbox turning into a man with muscles and rough fingertips and burn marks on his forearms. It was a dragon’s fiery breath and the click of a camera shutter as it attempted to immortalise yet another brief, fleeting moment. It was getting to grow old and holding onto memories of those who had not been able to do so. It was the scent left behind after a fireworks display, and the gooey centre of a marshmallow on a bonfire.
Life was love and it was loss, it was imagination and creation, it was embarking on an adventure and returning home at the end of one. It was working tirelessly to rebuild your world in the hope that you might just succeed in making it better than it had been before. It was as magical as it was mundane, as joyous as it was heartbreaking, and as fulfilling as you allowed yourself to be fulfilled by it.
Charlie smiled at Arthur and handed him the wrench he had asked for, his sense of nostalgia easing as he returned his focus to the present moment. And, in this moment, Charlie was grateful just to be in a small shed in the shadow of the higgledy-piggledy house that would always be his home, where he and his father could take a few hours out of their full lives to tinker away in peace.